Your nervous system was built for emergencies. Here’s what happens when it forgets to turn off, plus practical tools to help bring it back.
In my recent energy protection post, I made a claim I want to come back to.
I said your nervous system is your primary energetic interface with the world.
I stand by that. But I realize I dropped it there kind of like a grenade and walked away. So let’s actually talk about what it means…and more importantly, what you might to do about it.
Because if you’re chronically energy-drained, scattered, unable to hold your protection practices, exhausted by things that other people seem to handle fine…there’s a very good chance your nervous system is running a program that was never designed to be a lifestyle.
It was designed for emergencies.
What Fight or Flight Actually Is (And Isn’t)
Let’s start with the physiology of fight or flight, because I think it helps to understand what’s literally happening in the body.
So, your autonomic nervous system has two main branches. Sympathetic and parasympathetic. You’ve probably heard them described as fight or flight versus rest and digest. That’s accurate, if a little simplified.
The sympathetic nervous system is your emergency response system.
When it perceives a threat (real or imagined, physical or social) it floods the body with adrenaline and cortisol, redirects blood flow to the large muscle groups, suppresses digestion, and narrows focus.
All of that happens in a matter of seconds, pretty much below the level of conscious thought.
I mean, it’s brilliant engineering.
The problem is that it’s not very good at distinguishing between being chased by a tiger and trying to figure out how to respond to a difficult email.
When your body is in sympathetic activation, everything narrows, including perception and thinking.
Your capacity for nuance drops. You likely can’t read a room well, because you’re not in observation mode. You’re in threat-detection mode.
And here’s the part that matters for this discussion. Your energetic field narrows and destabilizes, too.
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The Other Half of the System
The sympathetic nervous system gets all the press. But it makes a lot more sense in relationship to its counterpart.
If the sympathetic nervous system is the ON switch, the parasympathetic nervous system is the OFF.
Or more accurately, it’s the home base that the sympathetic is supposed to return to once the threat has passed.
Where sympathetic activation narrows and mobilizes, parasympathetic does the opposite.
Heart rate slows. Breath deepens. Digestion resumes. Muscles release the tension they were holding in reserve. The body stops burning emergency fuel and goes back to maintenance mode.
This is the state where healing happens. Where integration happens. Where you can actually think clearly, read a room, feel what you’re feeling without being hijacked by it.
It’s also the state where your energetic field settles and coheres.
When you’re in parasympathetic dominance, you’re not broadcasting alarm. You’re not porous from the inside out. The container holds because the system holding it is actually at rest.
Here’s what most people don’t realize: The parasympathetic response largely isn’t passive. It’s not just the absence of stress. It’s an active physiological state. And it has an on-ramp.
The primary pathway for the parasympathetic nervous system is the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve longest nerve in the autonomic nervous system, running from your brainstem down through your heart and lungs and into your gut.
When the vagus nerve is well-toned and active, it applies what researchers call the “vagal brake.” It literally slows the heart and deepens the breath, signaling safety to the whole system.
Here’s the great news. You can stimulate it deliberately. That’s the whole game.
Which is why breathwork isn’t soft. Why humming and chanting aren’t incidental to healing traditions. Why cold water on your face can interrupt a spiral in under a minute.
These aren’t folk remedies dressed up as science. They’re direct inputs to a system that is absolutely waiting to be told it’s safe.
The parasympathetic response is always available to you. Even when it doesn’t feel like it.
The trick is to learn how to ask for it.
Why Sympathetic Overdrive Can Wreck Havoc With Your Energy
So, my energy protection post talked about being “wide open” and “leaking.” That’s exactly what chronic sympathetic activation does.
When you’re in fight or flight, your body is broadcasting. And loudly.
You’re putting out a stress signal at the physiological level. That means elevated heart rate, shallow breath, tension in the body, etc.
And that signal is perceptible to other nervous systems around you. (This is actually what neuroception is picking up on. We’re reading each other, all the time.)
You’re also less able to maintain what I called intentional containment.
The coherence required to hold your energy inside your own field generally requires a degree of physiological calm. Sympathetic overdrive is the opposite of that.
So if you’ve been doing all the practices and still feel like a sieve, this might be why. You’re trying to build a container while the system that would hold it is actively in emergency mode.
It’s not a failure of intention. It’s more of a hardware problem.
And there’s more.
Chronic stress…the kind that comes from prolonged sympathetic activation…is metabolically expensive.
Your body is burning resources to maintain a state of vigilance that was only meant to last for the duration of an actual threat (which, in the ancestral context, was probably minutes or hours, not months).
That’s where being bone-tired can come from. The kind that sleep doesn’t fix. The kind where you’ve had a full night and you’re still exhausted before the day starts.
Your body has been running a sprint for so long it’s forgotten what a walk feels like.
The Modern Threat Landscape
Here’s where I want to be real with you, because I don’t think the mainstream wellness conversation always is.
Most of us are living with an unprecedented sympathetic threat load.
Our nervous systems evolved in an environment of occasional, acute danger. Rest was the default. Threat was the exception.
Now it’s reversed.
The news cycle. The notification pings. The open-plan office. The inbox. Social media. Financial pressure. Family obligations. The low-grade hum of collective anxiety that’s been running since…well, pick a year.
None of those things are tigers chasing you through the jungle. But on a very real level, your nervous system doesn’t know that. It responds to perceived threat, and perceived threat is everywhere, all the time, nowadays.
Add in a history of trauma (and most of us have some, even if we don’t call it that), and the threshold for activation drops even further.
The nervous system that’s had to respond to real danger learns to be early. Learns to stay ready. Learns that the cost of being wrong is too high.
That’s not pathology. That’s an adaptive response to an adaptive environment.
It’s brilliant but it’s completely exhausting and it’s very, very common.
What Polyvagal Theory Adds to This Picture
I mentioned polyvagal theory in my energy protection post, and I want to go a little deeper here because I think it’s genuinely useful for understanding what’s happening.
Stephen Porges’ work on the polyvagal system gave us a more nuanced map of the nervous system than the simple two-branch model.
There’s a third state (the dorsal vagal state) that shows up when the sympathetic response has gone on too long or the threat feels inescapable.
It’s not fight or flight. It’s freeze. Shutdown. Disconnection. The possum playing dead.
(You’ve heard people say fight/flight/freeze, I’m sure.)
A lot of what gets described as depression, dissociation, numbness, or chronic fatigue has a dorsal vagal signature. And it often comes after a long period of sympathetic overdrive that the body eventually couldn’t sustain.
So there’s a spectrum, right. Ventral vagal (social engagement, safety, connection, the state we want to be in). Sympathetic (mobilization, fight or flight). And dorsal vagal (immobilization, shutdown).
From an energetic standpoint, these states map pretty neatly to what we’d describe as open and engaged, scattered and defended, and collapsed and unavailable.
The goal isn’t to never activate sympathetically. That’s not realistic or healthy. I mean, you need that system.
The goal is to have enough flexibility that you can move between states, and that you can return to ventral vagal (the state of safety and connection) reliably.
That’s nervous system resilience. And it’s trainable.
Practical Exits: How to Actually Get Out
This is the part I care most about.
I’m not here to hand out theory and send you on your way.
So let’s talk about what may actually work to help move the nervous system out of sympathetic overdrive and back toward something more like home base.
Breath Is a Master Key
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again because it keeps being true: I’m often abel to lower my systolic blood pressure 20 to 30 points in about a minute with focused breathwork.
Not in a clinical setting with ideal conditions. In real life. In my car before a difficult situation. In the bathroom at a gathering. In my office after a hard phone call.
(I’m not a doctor, this isn’t medical advice, I’m just sharing my personal lived experience and yours might be different, so please be very careful if you have high or low blood pressure.)
I share this because it’s not mystical and it’s actually not that unusual.
What’s unusual is that most people never learn how to use their breath deliberately. They breathe reactively their entire lives and never discover they have a lever.
The mechanism is direct. Your exhale activates the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve is the primary pathway of the parasympathetic nervous system. When you extend your exhale longer than the length of your inhale, you’re literally telling your body to stand down.
Try inhaling for four counts and exhaling for six to eight. Do that for a few rounds and notice what happens in your body. That’s a measurable, physiological shift. You’re not imagining it.
And if you want to try an experiment, if you have a cuff, take your blood pressure at home before you breathe and then after. See if there’s a difference.
This is also what makes breathwork a genuine energetic tool, not just a relaxation technique.
A regulated nervous system holds its field differently. The container becomes more coherent. And the signal you’re broadcasting changes.
Move the Body
Sympathetic activation mobilizes the body for action.
Adrenaline is going somewhere. If you never discharge it…if you sit with the stress of a difficult conversation and then sit some more…it often tends to stay in your tissues.
This is part of why somatic therapists and trauma workers make such a big deal about completing the stress cycle. The body needs a physical outlet for what the nervous system mobilized.
This isn’t me saying that you need a complicated workout program. You just need to move.
A walk. Shaking your hands out. Jumping up and down in your kitchen. A few rounds of vigorous breathing. A cold splash of water on your face (that’s the dive reflex…another direct parasympathetic trigger).
Anything that begins to signal to the body: The moment has passed, we’re okay, the threat is complete.
The Orienting Response
This one is simple but really pretty powerful.
When you’re in threat-detection mode, your gaze tends to narrow. You’re focused on the perceived threat. Your peripheral vision actually contracts.
You can often interrupt this deliberately by slowly turning your head from side to side and letting your eyes take in the full visual field. Soft gaze. No particular focus. Just looking around the room.
This is called the orienting response. It’s the neurological check that the environment is safe. When the visual scan comes back clear, the nervous system often gets the signal: Nothing here. Stand down.
Thirty seconds of slow visual scanning can generally take the edge off a sympathetic spike in a way that thinking your way out won’t.
Cold and Heat
Deliberate temperature exposure does things to the nervous system that are hard to replicate any other way.
Cold water on the face (or a cold shower if you’re up for it) triggers the dive reflex and can bring heart rate down fast. It’s direct parasympathetic activation.
Heat (a bath, a sauna, time in warm sun) has a slower and more sustained calming effect. It signals safety at the physiological level.
Neither of these requires special equipment or a protocol.
It can be a hot bath before bed. Cold water on your wrists and face after a hard day. These are ancient practices dressed up in modern physiology.
Sound and Vibration
The vagus nerve innervates the voice box, the throat, the inner ear. This means that humming, singing, chanting, or toning vibrates the vagus nerve directly.
I use sound and vibration in ceremony and in my own daily practice. (I’m a huge fan of tuning forks, especially the ones that you place directly on the body.)
It’s not incidental that every indigenous healing tradition on earth uses voice and percussion. They understood, in embodied terms, what we’re now measuring.
Again, this can be simple. Hum on your exhale. Chant something. Put on music that genuinely moves you and let your body respond. These aren’t soft suggestions. They’re direct inputs to the vagal pathway.
Grounding (For Real This Time)
I talked about grounding in my last post briefly. I want to come back to it here because in the context of fight or flight, it does specific work.
When your nervous system is in sympathetic activation, energy moves up. Literally. the blood pools away from the core and the extremities, breath becomes shallow and high in the chest, attention goes to the head.
Grounding pulls it back down.
Not as a metaphor. As a direction. Make sense?
Feet flat on the floor. Weight dropping down. Breath moving into the belly. Awareness moving down through the legs into the earth.
If you can get actual bare feet on actual earth, even better.
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The research on this is super interesting. Contact with the earth has measurable effects on heart rate variability and inflammatory markers.
Your ancestors knew what was up when they sat on the ground.
A Day in My Life (What This Actually Looks Like as a Practice for Me)
Let me give you a real life example.
My nervous system has been through a lot this year. I had a life-threatening case of anemia back in January. My hemoglobin was 4, my iron was 2. I needed four blood transfusions, multiple iron infusions.
I came very close to croaking. And I came out of it into a period of recovery that layered onto a stressful move and some other things I was carrying.
My blood pressure was at really high at its worst (think crisis level high). It’s now lower and still coming down, without pharmaceutical intervention…through deliberate nervous system work, plant medicine, and attention to what my body is telling me.
Let me be super clear: I’m not sharing this as medical advice. I’m sharing it because I want you to understand that I’m not writing from an armchair. This isn’t theoretical for me. I live in this work.
And I have good days and bad days.
What that looks like in practice. It’s a few minutes of breathwork in the morning before anything else.
Grounding when I remember I’ve been sitting and thinking and haven’t moved in a while.
Walking one of our Alaskan malamutes in ways that get my feet on the ground and force me into the present moment. Sound in my practice and sometimes just singing in my car because it helps.
Noticing when I’m in threat-detection mode and naming it rather than just letting it run me.
And ceremony.
Working with the plants I’m in relationship with. Sitting with cacao. Moving into spirit walking space where my nervous system gets something different from its usual diet of stimuli.
That’s the whole system. Not one tool. It’s a whole orientation.
The Energetic Read
Here’s the thing I want you to take away from this.
When I said in my previous post that your nervous system is your primary energetic interface, what I meant is this: The state of your nervous system determines what you’re broadcasting, what you’re receiving, and what you’re capable of holding.
A regulated nervous system sits in its own field.
It can sense what’s happening energetically around it without being taken over by it. It has genuine discernment, which means the ability to better notice what belongs to it and what doesn’t.
A nervous system in chronic sympathetic overdrive is porous and loud.
It’s hard to have clear energetic perception when you’re running an alarm. It’s hard to hold your container when your physiology is constantly in emergency mode.
This is why so many energy protection practices don’t hold. Not because the practices are wrong. Because the foundation isn’t there yet.
The protection practices layer on top of a regulated nervous system. They don’t replace the regulatory work.
Build the foundation first. Then the practices have something to land on.
Where to Go From Here
If this resonates and you want to go deeper on the nervous system piece, breathwork is one of the most accessible starting points.
Start there. Pick one technique and do it consistently for a week. Notice what happens.
If you want to explore what somatic work and energetic clearing look like together in a supported container, that’s exactly what I do in session work. My Reiki and energetic clearing sessions are both designed to work with the nervous system and the energy body as one system…because they are.
And if you haven’t read my energy protection post yet, it’s worth starting there. This one picks up where that one left off.
Disclaimer
I’m a shamanic practitioner and healing arts professional with nearly 30 years of experience — not a doctor or licensed medical professional. The content here is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult your healthcare provider about any symptoms, especially those related to blood pressure or heart health. Trust your body, but don’t self diagnose. Trust your discernment. And when it matters, see a doctor.
